Budget air travel and me? We’ve had our ups and downs

AS I stood with my maximum 10kg of hand baggage at the head of the priority boarding queue the other day, it dawned on me Ryanair and I had now been doing business for 20 years.

This is longer than I imagined my loyalty would last after that maiden flight from Glasgow to Paris which neither departed from anywhere near Glasgow nor arrived within an hour’s travel of Paris.

Then there were the turbulent middle years during which I once heard myself tell a cabin crew member that, regrettably, I was unwilling to assist in opening an emergency door in the event of a calamity unless she was prepared to let me sit in the emergency exit row which lay completely unoccupied.

She told me that would cost extra. ‘Then the deal’s off,’ I replied. ‘And I’ll be telling the Civil Aviation Authority about this.’ I did, too. It made the news.

Yet we came through. We even weathered the rough patch a couple of years ago when Ryanair left me stranded in Mallorca after passport-checkers launched a go-slow, bringing chaos to the airport.

Other carriers such as Thomson and Jet2 waited for their passengers. Not Ryanair. Instead they gave latecomers just one hour to rebook their flights with them for 100 euros each – a fiendish ploy to reduce the scope for exploring cheaper options.

Relationship

Yes, we’ve had our ups and downs, Ryanair and me, but I have worked on our relationship – one of us had to – while seeing a bit of easy-Jet on the side. Indeed, on this latest jaunt, I’d decided to fly out with one of them and return with the other, confident in the knowledge there must by now be nothing either could throw at me that would throw me.

Certain unassailable truths bubble to the surface, you see, after two decades of dealing with budget airlines. Such as this one: the best seat on the aircraft outside the cockpit is 1C and, yes, it’s worth paying a few quid extra for it.

Here bona fide legroom is available, as opposed to the pretendy variety offered in the extra inch or two in the overwing emergency exit rows. And here there is no chance of finding oneself next to a 30stone mountain range spilling over the arm-rest into your personal space and beyond.

That is because row one is also an exit row and outsized people, it is reckoned, don’t win many popularity contests around cramped aircraft exit areas during life or death scenarios.

The occupant of seat 1C is also first off the aircraft, which means first to passport control and, if your holidays swing that way, an early berth in the queue for the hire car. I hope you can see I have thought about this carefully.

Seat 1C, furthermore, guarantees priority boarding – or speedy boarding as easyJet (hilariously) likes to call it – which ensures a space for your bag in the locker over your own head, rather than that of someone ten rows back.

It was, then, with a head full of hard-won knowhow that I stood in those priority queues steeling myself for the unpleasantness ahead, telling myself I’d taken all reasonable steps to minimise it.

And it was with uncanny ingenuity that, even after 20 years, they still found new ways to confound me.

The latest wheeze revealed itself as I boarded the easyJet flight in Edinburgh and found a bulkhead occupying the space in front of row one where my size 11s were meant to go.

Legroom gone. And, because a huge screen now blocked easy access to the plane door, emergency exit status gone too – and, along with it, immunity to personal space invasion by the clinically obese.

Still, at least we’d be first off at the other end. We taxied onto the apron at Palma and parked next to an air bridge which, any second, surely, would clamp itself over the door 3ft away, allowing our escape.

Misfortunes

But the air bridge didn’t budge. Its operator had gone home and now we were too close to the contraption to get a set of steps to the front door.

‘Passengers are asked to disembark at the rear of the aircraft,’ confirmed the voice of Lucifer on the intercom. I was last off. Passport control was hell.

Perhaps happier times were to be had on the return journey – which brings us to that Ryanair priority boarding queue where our trip down memory lane began all those misfortunes ago at the top of the page.

It turned out priority boarders were first only to board the bus to the plane. Boarding the actual aircraft would be a free for all. It is in extremis, however, that frequent flier experience begins to tell. Gingerly I took up position just inside the door of the bus, ensuring that when it opened again, I’d still be in pole position to scoot up the steps and grab that first overhead compartment.

But, of course, airport buses have doors on both sides – and Sod and his law, I’ve come to understand, call the shots on variables such as these.

I heard fellow front seat passengers berate cabin staff about the priority boarding farce and the fact we and our luggage would now spend the journey several rows apart but I just put my headphones on and turned the volume up.

Frequent flier experience, see. Complaining doesn’t make a blind bit of difference.